


I Just Wasn't Made for These Times

by orphan_account



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Mutants, Blood and Gore, Domestic Violence, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Eventual Smut, M/M, POV Multiple, Post-Apocalypse, all the boys will show up eventually, not any graphic non-con elements but they'll be mentioned, people die
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-13
Updated: 2016-01-13
Packaged: 2018-05-13 17:37:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,578
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5711164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Louis Tomlinson is doing his best to make a safe space in a world where everyone lies and everything can hurt you. Harry Styles is just trying not to be noticed. </p>
<p>Or, two guys become friends, then enemies, then friends, then lovers all the while walking across England. One of them happens to be a mutant.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Just Wasn't Made for These Times

**Author's Note:**

> Hi all!
> 
> I'm thinking this is going to be quite long but I haven't really planned everything out yet, so please bear with me. Also, there are going to be multiple perspectives, which is usually the kind of thing I hate but it felt natural here. 
> 
> The chapters are going to be different lengths, and I don't have a beta so sorry about typos. 
> 
> P.S. I consider Zayn a member of One Direction for the purposes for fanfiction.

Louis doesn’t notice the man at first. He’s attuned to the noises around him—the call of a distant bird, the waving tree branches that all sound like incoming attackers. But the man is so quiet, barely breathing, and Louis doesn’t see him until he’s only 30 feet away. The figure is wearing dark colors, nearly blends into the wall behind him.  


  
Louis crouches in the bushes, trying to give himself some time to think. Something is very wrong. The man—at least Louis is pretty sure it’s a man—is propped against the wall of the abandoned barn, his head drooping forward onto his chest. His face is covered by long curly brown hair. The way he’s standing is weird, arms raised above his head. Fuck, Louis thinks. His wrists are bound together. He’s tied up. Which raises the really important question: where are the people who did this? Louis can’t afford to get caught by anyone angry enough to leave someone tied up as—what? A sacrifice? Bait? Regardless, base camp is 30 miles away, and while he has a gun it won’t be much help against a large group. Louis strains his ears. He hadn’t seen any signs of life on his walk this way, but it’s an unexplored square on the grid.  


  
He can leave right now. He can walk away, finish marking off major landmarks on his map, and bring back what food he can. He can add a small notation: “possible activity near this area. Avoid large barn structure.”  


  
Or he can see if the man is alive.  


  
He doesn’t have to bother with creeping up silently, but he does anyway. Impossible to tell who else is lurking in the woods, listening for strangers. He sticks to the shadows until he reaches the figure. No stench of decay. Chest rising and falling. Alive then. Up close Louis can see it’s not a man, really, more of a boy. Younger than Louis, probably, though it’s hard to tell through all that hair. He’s wearing dark jeans and a t-shirt. If he’s been here for more than 12 hours—and it looks like he has—the nights must have been rough. It’s getting cold outside.  


  
“Hey?” No response. Louis puts two fingers to the boy’s neck, to feel for a pulse. It’s steady. “Hello?” The boy flinches back, eyes wild. He seems to forget his hands are tied, tries to dart to the side before being pulled back. For a moment, he falls, and his arms take his entire body weight. The barn wall creaks, the and boy winces. “Shit, sorry!” Louis says. The boy is flipping his head, trying to get the hair out of his eyes so that he can see. For a second, they size each other up.  


  
“…Water?” asks the boy. His voice is deeper than Louis thought it would be, but quiet. He coughs, and it sounds painful and phlegmy. “You have water?” Louis wants to ask what he’s doing here, find out if he’s dangerous enough to be worth tying up in the first place, but it’s clear the boy can’t answer questions now. Louis digs out his water bottle, still mostly full. He unscrews the cap and holds it to the boy’s mouth. They do a sloppy job of it, spilling water down both of their shirts. When the bottle is half empty, the boy starts coughing, choking on the water. He spits some of it up, tries to pull forward and drink more, but Louis holds the bottle away from him.  


  
“No more. You’re going to be sick.” The boy seems to consider, then nods. Now that he’s had something to drink he seems more alert, and Louis can tell he hasn’t been out here for too long. A few days at the most, probably. He still looks healthy, underneath the bruises and despite the chaffed wrists.  


  
“Thanks,” the boy says. “Do you…do you have any food? Or could you just untie me? I…” Louis knows what he has to do next. He pulls out his gun, holds it in his hand nonthreateningly, pointed at the ground.  


  
“I’m going to untie you.” The boy is looking at the gun. “But I need you to tell me why you’re tied up in the first place. Don’t lie, yeah?” A nod.  


  
“Uh…” The boy licks his chapped lips. “I was with this group. They seemed nice but, uh, they were really religious—not that there’s anything wrong with that.” Louis makes a gesture with his free hand as if to say okay hurry up. “They were one of those sacrifice tribes.” Louis nods. He’s heard of them. Religious types that think the best way to end this whole mess is to offer someone up to God, either by leaving some helpless person wandering around or just handing them over to unfriendly groups. He figures most of the victims get picked up by mutants and made into servants. If you’re luckier you’re picked up by cannibals, who at least kill you quickly. Not for the first time, Louis thinks about how lucky he is to live somewhere relatively safe. How lucky he is to raise his sisters there. Because the world outside isn’t good anymore, it’s treacherous. There are too many freaks walking around, people who can make you see things or feel things that aren’t there. People who can move small objects with their minds or look through walls.  


  
There are people who can hurt you, terribly. Louis has seen the slaves before. Sometimes one will be rescued and brought back to base camp for a second chance at life. They’re thin, shivering creatures who flinch at the slightest noise. Louis has empathy for them, he really does, but it’s hard to be around them when every move they make is a reminder of what can happen when you don’t have the safety of the group. Seeing them is like walking out your front door to a sea of corpses. They’re still alive, but they’re victims.  


  
The boy continues. “I guess that’s why they grabbed me in the first place. I was wandering around.” The boy sounds calm, but his eyes are on Louis’ gun. “Uh, can you untie me?”  


  
“Huh? Oh, shit. Yeah.” Louis opens his rucksack, careful to keep an eye on the boy. His knife is in the front pocket. Stupid, really. He needs to be better, keep his knife on his belt at all times. Living on the base has made him soft. Although he’s smiling weakly, the boy starts to shake a little when Louis snaps the knife open and moves closer to cut the ropes. They’re thick; it’s going to take a little while. “What’s your name?” he asks. Keep the kid talking. He’s starting to panic, and panic is what gets you killed out here.  


  
“Harry.”  


  
“Pleased to meet you, Harry. I’m Louis. I’d shake your hand, but I reckon I need to get started on those.” He uses the tip of his knife to gesture at the ropes. “Yeah?”  


  
“Yeah. Please.”  


  
“So, Harry, what’s your story? How’d you end up with some religious nutjobs?” Nowadays it’s rude to ask people where they’re from, what they like to do for fun. Nobody has a family or a hobby. Ask people about the past three years. They’re the only years that matter now.  


  
“Boy trouble. Spent a few years with a guy who treated me like shit, honestly. Standard stuff. Fight, go your separate ways, realize you don’t know how to…” Harry gets distracted momentarily by the movement of the knife as it saws through his bonds. Louis can see why: the skin under the rope is rubbed raw and bloody. It must hurt. “…Realize you don’t know how to live alone anymore.” Louis knows what he means. Who can you trust to sleep lightly and be ready to shoot at a moment’s notice? Where can you find someone who knows how to hunt? Louis has his sisters and Zayn. He can’t imagine how exhausting it would be out here alone. No wonder this kid had settled in with the first big group he met.  


  
Louis grunts as he saws through the last of the rope. Harry collapses like his restraints had been the only thing holding him up. He curls up on himself for a second, holding his injured wrists to his chest and breathing heavily.  


  
“Sorry.”  


  
“No, mate. Take your time.” Even as he says this, Louis is scanning the horizon. It’s getting dark out. He should find shelter before the sun sets. Simply spending so much time with Harry has been a mistake; he doesn’t know this kid or what he’s capable of. Something about finding him half-starved and tied up was reassuring though, like a big sign signaling incompetence. Nobody stupid enough to get picked up by a group of nuts is smart enough to disarm Louis. So he’s not going to offer Harry anything, but he’ll see what the kid says. “I have to go. It’s getting dark. Good luck, yeah?” He closes his knife and starts to walk away, expecting Harry to call out for him to wait. Instead he hears a curse and the sound of someone running.  


  
“Are you looking for a somewhere to stay for the night?” Harry asks.  


  
“Maybe.”  


  
“I know a place. Come on.” Harry leads the way, a little unsteady but sure of where he’s going. With a hand on his gun, Louis follows. If Harry knows about the area, maybe he can help Louis fill in the map a little. They need an expanded diagram of the territory around them, after a shitty harvest and dwindling supplies. He’s spent the past day marking down every building and landmark he can find. It’s slow work, and he’d be grateful for any help he can get. Leaving the girls like this unsettles him sometimes, bothers him at a low level he’s learned to almost ignore, like the hum of florescent lights.  


  
“What do you want in return, Harry?” The other boy laughs.  


  
“I would really, really love some food.”  


  
Turns out the place Harry leads them to is perfect. They walk slowly, since every couple minutes Harry has to stop and stifle a coughing fit. When he says “we’re turning left up here,” and points ahead, Louis notices that his hand is shaking. If it’s an act, it’s a good one.  


  
They walk for 35 minutes. This was an isolated part of the country before everything went to hell, and now it’s even quieter. They’re about 10 miles from the nearest suburb, not long when you’re traveling by car but at least a two-hour walk. This used to be a forest preserve or something, evidently. It’s too lush to just be overgrowth from the past few years. The trees are tall and the paths unpaved. Harry’s taken him to a small cabin with a sign reading “visitor’s center.” Inside, there’s a desk, some chairs, and a dusty couch. The brochures are illegible now, and the computer’s clearly waterlogged, with condensation trapped behind the screen. Louis likes it here. Unlike homes, places of business don’t have a leftover aura of death. People worked here, but they didn’t live here. So they didn’t die here either.  


  
“How’d you find this place?”  


  
“Oh, I used to come here with my family back before everything. We went camping sometimes. That building where you found me?”  


  
“Yeah, the barn?”  


  
“It used to be a kind of museum. Local animals and plants on display, a place for kids to learn what it was like to milk a cow. That kind of thing. They had pony rides.” He laughs a little, and it turns into a hacking cough that has him holding onto the wall for support.  


  
“You seem to know the area pretty well.”  


  
“You sound suspicious.” Louis shrugs. “It’s not a trap," Harry says. He sits down heavily on one of the desk chairs. Now that they’re not out in the open, Louis has a chance to really study the other boy. He’s tall and pale with a few tattoos scattered up and down this thin arms. He’s not emaciated; rather, he has the look of someone who used to be in good shape and now just isn’t getting enough to eat. He’d build muscle back quickly if he had proper nutrition.  


  
This is how Louis thinks of people now, calculations about their strength and size, the conditions under which they’ve been living. Still, some small part of him notices how good-looking Harry is. Which is to say very good-looking. In a dingy bar in some alternate universe, Louis is counting down the seconds until he can take this boy home. But, now, in this universe the thought annoys him like a fly he can swat away without much effort. It’s been too long since he acted on those impulses.  


  
They sit in companionable silence for a while, taking a second to rest after the long walk. Or rather, Harry is resting. Louis feels fine. He’s used to walking miles at a time with his backpack, but Harry doesn’t look like he handled the walk very well.  


  
“Oh, shit.” Louis grabs a granola bar from his bag. He doesn’t have too much food to spare—they plan very carefully so that each person only takes the exact amount of food they need for the trip—but he also doesn’t want to deal with Harry fainting from hunger. He hands it over to Harry, who opens it slowly, looking at the wrapper and sniffing the granola bar before starting to eat. Checking for to see if it's been tampered with. It’s an admirable level of self-control for someone who must be starving.  


  
“Sorry,” he says in between bites. “Nothing personal.”  


  
“No offense taken. How long'd you been tied up?”  


  
“Four days, I think. My back is killing me.” He rolls his shoulders theatrically to demonstrate but ends up wincing in genuine pain. As Harry finishes the granola bar, Louis can see he’s preparing to leave. Harry’s eyes quickly scan the room for anything useful, which tells Louis what he needs to know: Harry has nothing. Not in his pockets, not dropped off somewhere safely in the woods. He’s scanning a tourism office for something to protect himself with.  


  
“I’ll see you around then…” Harry steps forwardly hesitantly and holds out his hand for Louis to shake, which he does. “Thanks. For saving my life.”  


  
Growing up, Louis was never an introvert. He was never the person who wanted the party to be over or who dreaded meeting new people. But now he feels the relief that he imagines introverts do: the pleasure of anticipating someone's departure. Harry seems nice—or at least, helpless—but so do a lot of people. It doesn't mean much anymore.  


  
"Hey."  


  
"Hmm?"  


  
"I don't mean to be an arse, but you should I know I sleep with my gun." Meaning: you might know where I'm spending the night, but good luck coming back to rob me. "Here." He tosses another granola bar to Harry, who fails to catch it and has to bend down awkwardly to pick it up.  


  
"Yeah, yeah, yeah. Of course." He looks sick, hungry, and tired, but he also looks desperate to go, and Louis lets him.  


  
Hours later, when he goes outside to have a piss, Louis walks into the dark and steps on Harry's hand.

  


**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! I have a loose plot in mind, so I promise to do my best to take this somewhere.


End file.
